CBC sees emerging digital services reorganized under head Galipeau

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has reorganized its new and emerging content channels, and put the most interactive under a single administrative umbrella. Late last month, the newly-minted executive director of digital programming and business development for CBC’s English-language services, Claude Galipeau, told Canadian NEW MEDIA that he’ll now be responsible for the continued growth and development of new and established digital programming and related services. Claude was executive director of CBC.ca. His colleague Sue Gardner has been appointed senior director of CBC.ca as part of the shakeup. Galipeau says his new unit will incorporate all of CBC’s digital programming services, including new media, Newsworld International , CBC.ca, the diginet Country Canada, the Documentary Channel, in which the public broadcaster is a partner with Corus Entertainment and the National Film Board, and a "repurposing unit" that mines the corporation’s archives for programming. He will be responsible for creating new revenue channels for those units, as well as linking them with the CBC’s other radio and television units. While at first glance the various assets seem potentially disparate for grouping under a single new unit, Galipeau says the various activities have important common threads. "…These things are places where the choices presented to consumers are getting ever more varied and multiple. So, we now have someone in charge of figuring out where the consumer is going, where the viewer is going…A big focus on the consumer is important, because these new emerging platforms are all about increased consumer sovereignty." The CBC has recently made great strides in better understanding its web metrics, something Galipeau says was factored in the reorganization. "The learning from the web is that you’re dealing with in the ultimate channel-surfing environment and the one where the consumer is the most sovereign. All emerging platforms, because they’re very much focused on consumer choice, they must be sensitive to programming in an environment where the consumer is the most sovereign in the media universe." The new unit will likely be a single point of contact for content producers working in converged media, and have a more entrepreneurial culture than its more staid radio and TV partners. Galipeau says that even within the unit, there will continue to be team leaders responsible for each of the channels in the new unit since, for example, running a web site requires a different perspective and skill set than a diginet. "There’s not going to be a single strategic direction. There’s single accountability. So, where possible they’re all going to support each other. It’s all the media lines supporting each other at the CBC. It’s not saying that Country Canada is going to do what CBC.ca has to do. It’s not that at all. It says that for these emerging platforms, and our established ones like CBC.ca, when we want to develop businesses, they come to one person." An important focus for Galipeau will be to keep the various properties on the "leading edge, not the bleeding edge." He notes that the unit will have an entrepreneurial culture suitable for one devoted to emerging technological platforms, but that he’ll continue to exercise financial discretion. "It’s to make sure that the CBC is prepared and nimble in all emerging platforms, but, that it also has a very solid direction that’s balanced with regard to investments." The reorganization takes place in the context of pleas by recently-renewed president Robert Rabinovitch for increased funding from Ottawa. He came under heavy fire during appointment hearings before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for its cutbacks to local programming, and resources are a perpetual problem for the modern-day CBC. Galipeau says increased funds for emerging platforms are also needed. "I think Ottawa is pretty sensitive to the fact that the CBC has changed in both business practices and also in the range of its offerings. I would tend to think that CBC.ca and Country Canada are just examples of that. They know that. We’re also leaders in things like video-on-demand and interactive television." Galipeau says that while the shape of an upcoming strategic plan for the public broadcaster is in Rabinovitch’s hands, the need to keep the CBC future-oriented will play an important part in the organization’s direction.

CBC sees emerging digital services reorganized under head Galipeau

Broadcast | December 6, 2004

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